Rethinking Africa’s Development

Description

The three papers in this book are papers prepared to address some of the issues confronting African countries on their path to development. It is hoped that the analysis presented here will inspire debate among African intelligentsia and prompt them to a better design of development policies staying away from perceived ideas which declare that African countries cannot develop unless they copy what is done in the Western world and also that colonization could be the hindering factor. This book deals with a new development paradigm for African economies in the aftermath of the financial crisis, whether the colonial heritage influences the relationship between economic freedom and economic performance and the extent to which democracy has an impact on a country’s economic performance. The analysis in the first paper could be extended to the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic given that African countries did not draw lessons from the financial crisis so as to build resilience to international crisis. The second paper investigates extent to which the relationship between economic freedom and economic performance in the ECOWAS region is affected by the colonial heritage of the countries. The third paper investigates the impact of regime change (proxy by democracy) on a country’s economic performance. The study focused on Cote d’Ivoire, a country in West Africa and member of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).